The Executive Team

The Centre has a young dynamic and talented team which has worked on different aspects of Culture and Traditional Knowledge:

Dr. Navina Jafa:Vice President and the Chief Executive officer - Centre for New Perspectives.
A Fulbright Scholar at the Smithsonian Museum Washington DC on Cultural Management, Policy and Cultural Diplomacy. Within this framework Dr. Jafa engaged with large number of institutions and development of policy programs under UNESCO, National Endowments for the Arts and Kennedy Centre which were in partnership with the Smithsonian Centre for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. Dr. Jafa has actively invested as an academician on Intangible Heritage, creation of the academic field of Heritage Studies, and Tourism.

She has pioneered Academic tourism and launched the Heritage Education program for CBSE under Indian Cultural Heritage Research under which she has communicated the experiential learning of India through academic tourism to wide set of world leaders, corporate eminent Nobel Prize winners and academicians.

She has taught as the Feldman Scholar at the Brandeis University at the Heller School of International Sustainable development a program on Culture and Development. Dr. Jafa has trained with Pandit Birju Maharaj for over two decades in Kathak dance, and continues to perform on National and International stages her forte is abhinaya or interpretative dance.

Dr. Jafa worked as research scholar at the Indira Gandhi Centre for the Arts, and did her PhD on Intangible and Urban Heritage, and Cultural Patronage under Dr. Kapila Vatsyayan and Dr. Narayani Gupta. Dr. Jafa was chief consultant with the Asian Heritage Foundation on Intangible heritage. She has written and published widely on various aspects of Culture and Traditional knowledge and Cultural Management.

Dr. Jafa has worked with various Embassies in New Delhi for the last two decades to work on Cultural sustainable programs.

Ms. Shailaja Kathuria: Director and Program Coordinator - Centre for New Perspectives.
Ms. Kathuria has worked as a research scholar with the Asian Heritage Foundation where she researched widely on Traditional and Cultural Skills in the nine countries of South Asia – Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Maldives. She has assisted in organizing consultative meetings between experts from these countries working in the field of Culture and Development, Intangible Heritage, Creative industries and Traditional Skills.
Ms. Kathuria has worked to develop strategies on Cultural and Traditional Skill Mapping which was presented as a blueprint by the Centre for New Perspectives to National Skill Development Corporation, Government of India. Ms. Kathuria has researched intensively on Cultural Heritage of Colonial Agra, and Culture Skills and traditions of the area of Braj. In this area she has published extensive work.

She has worked closely at the Centre to develop strategies to re-position skills associated with marginalized street and folk performers and to create innovative livelihood programs. Ms. Kathuria has also worked at the Centre towards creation of the idea of Cultural and Traditional Skill Corridor on which the Centre has a trademark and copyright. Recently, MsKathuria has been working on Cultural and Traditional skills as Green Skills and to introduce distinct pilot program for conserving skills and synergizing the conservation of Natural environments.

Priyatej Kotipalli: Secretary, Project Coordinator - Centre for New Perspectives
Mr. Kotipalli as Program Director for Creare Foundation – Centre for Research in Arts and Economics, Rotterdam, the Netherlands which works to understand challenges in the interface between culture, the arts and the economy and to enable practitioners and policy makers in the cultural field and students to acquire knowledge of new insights that research generates. It works in partnership with various educational and research institutes as well as cultural organization to organize courses in countries all over the world. Mr. Kotipalli has operationalized, sustained new collaborations and partnerships in South Asia and the continental United States where recently working in the field of Cultural Economics and Value of Culture has been successful in getting partnership with the Carnegie Mellon University.

He has served as secretary for Beyond Foundation (http://www.beyond-foundation.org/) a nonprofit organization established by a Swiss couple Regula and Beat Curti to support conflict resolution and cross cultural understanding, awareness, dialogue and respect through Music. Mr. Kotipalli has worked on a program Stitching Music and Beyond on reconciliation in conflict zones of Syria and Ukraine.

Mr. Kotipalli has worked as a short tem consultant with the World Bank to aid in the development of the Monitoring and Evaluation for a project titled “creating inclusive business models for marginalized tribal communities in Odisha, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh”
Mr. Kotipalli works as a consultant with an Italian foundation funded by Caritas which works as a social incubator in the time of social change to impact meaningful social transformation with the objective to reduce poverty and make new models for social welfare through cultural economics..

As a senior lecturer he has worked with ITM group of institution as module coordinator for Strategic Management and Business Consulting for a Collaborative program with Queen Margaret University (Scotland) , Bachelors thesis guide for University of Mumbai,-preparing NAAC committee report for ITM – IHM and setting up collaboration for ITM- IHM and KUONI - for post graduate diploma.